


Silver Star

by SophieHatter



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Future Fic, Multi, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-07-28 12:26:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16241591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophieHatter/pseuds/SophieHatter
Summary: When she applies for the mission to Teirem, Sam Carter Is determined to find her place within the Silver Star Foundation on her own terms. Her family name, however, follows her wherever she goes and people either expect her to be a prodigy or a coddled princess.** more summary to come as story develops. Rest assured the whole cast will be here.





	1. Chapter 1

It wasn’t so much the heat, but the humidity. Come nightfall, the temperature dropped but the humidity remained. Through dinner, condensation pooled on the table around anything cold. After a shower, you were just as hot and sticky as you had been when you stepped under the water. In bed, your clothes clung and anything on your skin held pools of damp heat.

There was all that to put up with on this planet, but then, this. And this made up for it.

The stars were vanishing to blackness, erased by the cool, relieving wind bringing with it the storm. Far in the distance, lightning raced across the sky, occasionally splitting and touching the earth. The smell of ozone and of hot soil being pelted by cold, relieving rain brought with it ease and peace.

“You’re going to get soaked, not to mention struck by lightning,” a gruff, male voice told her from below.

“Struck by lightning seems unlikely, given the spire.” Sam glanced towards the tall rock formation that jutted out from the spur that sheltered their camp. She had climbed part of that spur to get a better view of storm as it rolled across the plain to their west.

His boots crunched on the gravel as he took a few more steps upwards. “May I join you?”

“Sure, Colonel.” She used the moniker that the other staff did, although she knew very little about the older man.

“Jack,” he told her, coming to her position and sitting down. “Colonel is from ... a very long time ago.”

“Jack is a time traveller?” She wondered.

He hadn’t expected that and he barked a laugh. “It feels like that, sometimes,” Jack conceded. “Never thought I’d live this long.”

“Is that because of the serum or your military service?” Sam wondered, conversationally, her eyes still fixed on the storm.

Instead of answering, Jack dug his heel into the dirt, causing a cascade of pebbles.

“Sorry,” Sam sobered. “I didn’t mean to get personal. I’m still learning everyone’s stories.”

“Serum doesn’t stop bullets or accidents,” Jack said, his eyes also fixed on the storm.

“No, it doesn’t,” Sam agreed, thinking of her mother. A rumble that could be felt as well as heard followed a particularly bright lightning strike and she oohed like a kid at a fireworks show. She felt Jack turn to look at her, but she refused to be embarrassed. “What brought you to Teirem?”

“Who,” Jack corrected. “I’ve been working with Georgie for nearly a decade.”

“You know her well, then?” She cringed at the question. Of course he knew her well.

“She’s a good director. Tough and focused on the objectives. But it’s the people Georgie cares about most. That’s what makes her so good at this stuff.” Jack answered the spirit of Sam’s question, pushing past the obvious answer.

Sam had only been with the mission for a month and she was new to the Silver Star Foundation. She didn’t have the ties that a lot of the people in the camp had to each other, shared experiences going back 5 or 6 or more missions. It was a tight enough group that she still felt a bit on the outside, hadn’t found her right fit within the team, yet.

“You’re Janet’s friend,” Jack stated. “She told me that you guys go way back.”

“We do,” Sam agreed. “Our families have been close since before either of us were born.”

“Carter,” he mused, “You’re one of those Carters?” Scuffing his boot, Jack unleashed another cascade of pebbles.

“She was my great-grandmother,” Sam supplied, feeling awkward. She rarely claimed her heritage publicly and, within the Silver Star, she just wanted to be recognised for her own talents, not who her family was or knew.

“Samantha Carter,” Jack breathed beside her. “General Carter, first female Chief of Staff of the Air Force and the first female Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That’s quite a pedigree.”

“My father thought the name was a good idea.” Wincing at her own dismissal of her father, Sam clarified. “They were close and she died not long before I was born. She got an early version of the serum that wasn’t as effective.”

“General Carter was still Chair of the Joint Chiefs when I enlisted,” Jack told her.

Sam turned as if she were looking down on their camp, instead studying him in the dim light given off by the night time business of the camp’s residents. It wasn’t like she’d spent a lot of time studying Jack O’Neill before, but she wouldn’t have picked him for 50 or older.

“Version 3 of the serum,” he told her, having noted in her less than stealthy look. “Back when they were only giving it to military officers and high ranking government officials.”

“Ahh,” Sam turned back to the storm. The wind had picked up, there was a colder bite in the air. It was getting closer. The serum was now available to anyone who was 16. It was 12 years since she had gotten her shot of Version 3, but at least 29 since Jack had got his.

“So you like getting wet?” Jack asked her.

“Huh?”

“We’ve got about five minutes to get back to camp before the rain gets here.”

“I don’t mind getting wet, but if my clothes are soaking it’s going to be uncomfortable once the storm has passed.”

Jack got to his feet and held his hand out to her. Sam grasped it and stood up.

“You could always dance in the rain naked.” At first, his expression was flat and Sam’s eyes went wide at the suggestion. Then Jack winked at her, slowly, to make sure she caught it in the near dark.

Smiling, Sam began finding the trail she had used to ascend the spur. “I only dance naked if I’m up here alone.”

Jack waited behind her, leaving a gap between them so any debris, or even himself, would likely miss her if they were knocked loose on the descent. When he reached the bottom, she was waiting for him and they fell into a comfortable, matched pace on the way back got he camp.

“I’ll have to be stealthier, next time,” Jack told her.

“Now I’ll be looking for you,” Sam challenged with a grin as she turned to the right, heading towards the junior mission staff’s row of tents.

Jack watched the young, blonde engineer saunter down the pathway before turning to the left and making his own way to bed. He liked her energy, but then so many of the Greenies arrived full of energy and determination to right the universe and then never returned after their first tour. No point in getting attached to any of them so soon.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had thought to call Janet Jeanie, but then added Jeanie McKay to the roster of staff, so have changed her back to Janet in chapter 1.

“This is the last pot of coffee until the next shipment,” Walter let everyone at the briefing table know. His pronouncement was met with collective groans.

Walter rolled his eyes and Sam gave him a sympathetic smile as she poured herself a cup. As the mission’s Chief Operations Officer, Walter was always delivering bad news about shortages and problems. When they ran out of coffee or soap, the staff tended to forget that he was also the one that requisitioned their personal orders and nearly always got them whatever it was they wanted, no matter where on Earth they had come from.

Sam slid into an empty seat along the side of the table just as Georgie walked into the large tent. The briefing table, which was also a strategy table, the games night table and, during mealtimes, just a table, sat at one end of the large assembly tent used by all the staff. At the opposite end was the camp’s kitchen and they all walked or sat on a raised floor which sealed in the tent from weather, dust and vermin.

Having been through a few of these meetings, now, Sam watched the people around the table instead of their Mission Director. It was always interesting to try and guess everyone’s background. There were quite a few of the staff who were ex-military and Sam had begun figuring out who by the way they straightened and tensed, as if they wanted to come to their feet, when General Georgina Hammond (retired) entered their presence.

Jack did, of course, but she’d already known about him. Then there was Cammy, their Chief Logistics Officer. Everyone knew she had been an Air Force pilot. Walter was a surprise, though. She wouldn’t have picked the affable, round faced man as ex-service, although the way he ran operations should have clued her in.

The heads of departments were all assembled around the table. In addition to Jack, Cammy, Walter and herself, there was Janet, their CMO, and Teal’c, a Jaffa who specialised in Community Development. Most of the team were Tau’ri, humans who originated from the planet Earth, but a good number of the people employed by the Silver Star Foundation were Jaffa, Tok’ra or humans from other planets. Wherever they went, Silver Star trained and recruited from the populations they worked with.

Georgie took her seat and the alertness of all the people at the table eased. “Morning, team,” she greeted them and waited a moment for their reply before continuing. “Who’s excited about meeting our new partners?”

There was a general murmur of agreement around the table and Georgie nodded to Teal’c, the only person to have met the villagers of Silvado, to take over the briefing.

“Daniel and I have spent two weeks meeting with the villagers. Similar in culture to ...”

Sam kept half an ear on Teal’c’s introduction as she continued to make notes. She’d already read his briefing, the purpose of this meeting was to discuss how the departments could work together to deliver the various needs of the village. Teal’c had already recommended a water pump, filtration and public waste processing for Silvado. Sam, for the moment, was listening for other needs or problems that her team of engineers and scientists could solve.

Leaning towards Janet, who was sitting beside her, Sam asked, “Where’s Daniel?”

“He stayed in Silvado. Usually does, says he doesn’t like to interrupt the rapport building when it’s in the early stages.”

Janet’s answer was quiet but Sam felt the Director’s eyes on them and she went back to making notes, working on a list of resources they would need for the already identified projects.

Once the briefing was over, the team gathered out front while Jack organised the deployment of passengers and vehicles with Cammy. In addition to the heads of department, various other staff were coming with them. Janet had an additional doctor and a nurse, Jack was bringing three more security officers and Cammy was sending two drivers, Teal’c was authorised to drive one of the three vehicles.

Jack, Walter and Cammy conversed, checking until they were satisfied that the vehicles were stocked with enough backup supplies, that the security staff were deployed in the right places and that the drivers and Teal’c knew the route. Finally, they were satisfied and the convoy was given the all-clear.

It was Sam’s fifth trip out of camp. Barely over the gatelag, she’d been taken to Girato, the first village that the Silver Star team had worked with. There, she’d overseen the training of the villagers, helping them to learn how to maintain and repair the equipment that had been installed. She’d even had the chance to help a member of the village learn how to manufacture various parts. Fortunately, metalworking and smithing were skills this planet already had.

Now, instead of taking over the work of the previous CSO, Sam was heading up her own project with the Silver Star. Having grown up on the fringes of the Foundation, she had worked towards this opportunity since she was a child, sitting at Cassandra’s knee with Janet and the mixed crowd of cousins, Fraisers and Carters and sometimes the Weirs, hearing tales of the time the Goa’uld enslaved the galaxy. Her namesake had featured in the stories, just a junior officer in the Air Force when the war against the Goa’uld had started, but Captain Samantha Carter had been fundamental in the defeat of the System Lords. Sam, though she rarely admitted it, was proud of her great grandmother.

That Samantha Carter the first had rescued Cassandra, whose planet had been subject to the Goa’uld Nirrti and her experiments, had seemed heroic, when she was younger, and fortuitous when Sam was old enough to understand the impact that Cassandra Fraiser had gone on to have. As founder of the Silver Star Foundation, Cassandra had been the first civilian Tau’ri to give humanitarian aid to the galaxy. From her position of influence, utilising the connections of her adoptive family, Cassandra had set out to right the wrongs the Goa’uld had inflicted on the innocent.

The Silver Star’s Mission was broad, but founded in three things - freedom from poverty, sickness and erasure. Each mission did more or less of each of those things, depending on what the local community wanted, but Cassandra’s goal was to ensure that what had happened on her home planet could not happen again on someone else’s. Every project that The Foundation took on was based in sharing and preserving knowledge and culture and providing support and rehabilitation to the peoples still recovering, even a century later, from the Goa’uld’s reign of terror.

Sam had been raised on the stories of Stargate Command and the Silver Star Foundation. Now, she was finally going to be a part of those adventures.


	3. Chapter 3

It was a two hour drive to Silvado along a track made for walking, not driving. If there had been a dedicated road, it would have been a lot faster, and more comfortable, to get there.

The vehicles, and even the ships, they used were ex-military. Sturdy, functional and safe, they were also 30 years behind current vehicle technology. Given the generally low technology standards of the planets they worked on, that was a good thing. Walter and Siler, his 2IC, were tasked with keeping the vehicle fleet running. With at least a month between supply drops, they often had to make do without the right tools or parts to fix whatever broke.

Sam found herself being jostled along in the same vehicle as Jack and Lou, one of Jack’s security officers. Looking out the window she could see the Spire standing out against the end of the spur that sheltered their camp. A thought struck her and she turned to Jack.

“Did you guys choose to set up camp by the Spire because it was easy to see from far away?”

Jack turned to her, his fingers poised in the air above his knee which he had been tapping incessantly since they left. “Partially. It’s a way marker of sorts for the locals. It makes it easy to tell them how to find us and we can stay in touch with news and events by hosting travellers as they pass through.”

“So it puts us on the various paths they use?”

“That’s it. Silvado and Girato are connected by the Spire as well as two other villages that Teal’c is looking to work with. The council of Girato was the first to approach us for partnership.” He gestured back towards the Spire, “Being central to four villages made it a good spot and we’re only an hours’ walk from the Stargate if there’s an emergency. If we end up working with villages farther away, we might move camp.”

“How long does that take?” Sam wondered, trying to imagine packing everything up that was at camp and then transporting it.

“If we have the ship, it’s not too bad. We beam it up and then drop it off in the new location. If we move it ourselves ... well, we only did that once and I don’t think Georgie wants to do that again. Of course, that time we had no choice,” Jack noted.

“Why was that?” Sam asked.

“A near dormant volcano came back to life. There was a possibility of lava or mud flows, so we packed everything up and moved a hundred klicks away.” Jack gestured back to camp, “Similar sized operation to what we’ve got here. We worked around the clock for two weeks. Got a new camp set up and running before the ship came back in orbit. They moved the last of it, but we did two thirds of it overland.”

“I’ll just jump into the volcano, next time,” Lou commented from the front seat. Jack snorted in agreement.

“That’s why we’re a lot more careful about where we base ourselves, now. Georgie won’t let a site through until we’ve had a thorough geological and climactic survey.”

“So Lou’s been doing this a while, too?” Sam asked, her voice pitched loud enough for him to hear her.

“The General just keeps dragging us in to her web,” Lou quipped back. “The powers that be ain’t too happy about Silver Star taking so many service folks, but they can’t do anything about it.”

“The military’s all restructuring, anyway. They’d be losing people whether Georgie was recruiting them or not,” Jack added. To Sam, he began listing off names, “There’s Georgie, I served under her and we came to the Silver Star together. Lou and then Kawalsky came for my second tour with Georgie. Cammy joined us for number four.”

“Siler came the same time as us,” Lou continued. “And Walter was already in the team, then.”

“Right,” Jack explained to Sam and Lou, “Georgie brought him in when his contract finished, midway through our first mission.”

“So how many missions have you guys done?” Sam wondered.

“Six,” Jack answered.

“Five.” That was Lou.

“Two,” O’lea, their driver, answered.

“Were you one of Georgie’s recruits?” Sam asked O’lea.

“No. Master Teal’c’s,” she replied. O’lea was quiet, like Teal’c. Sam had barely exchanged more than ten words with her in the month she had been here.

“You’re a Jaffa?” Sam asked.

“I am. I was born free, thanks to the Tau’ri and Master Braetac. So I do not bear a false god’s mark. Master Teal’c recruited me for that reason.”

“Because you’re not marked?” Sam asked, trying to work out what specific reason that would give Teal’c for wanting to recruit her.

“I am Freeborn,” O’lea told Sam, correcting her with the preferred term used for unmarked Jaffa. “Because I am a stepping stone between the Jaffa and the other peoples of this galaxy.”

Sam mused over her words - a stepping stone, a bridge, filling the gulf between the Jaffa who were once the army of the System Lords and everyone else, who were oppressed by the System Lords and the armies that they directed. “So, because you are Freeborn, you can help others understand that the Jaffa are no longer under the direction of the System Lords.”

“That is so,” O’lea agreed. “I am a driver, for now, because I am visible to many people and so I get to know others and interact with them. Teal’c is preparing me for a role like his. I will be one who works to help people as he does, one day.”

The woman’s words reminded Sam that their mandate always included community empowerment and the sharing of skills and knowledge. Here was one example of that, O’lea would one day be leading her own project in the Silver Star or even doing something on her own. Once again, Sam found herself marvelling at what Cassandra had set in motion.

“Hey, check out that tycha,” Lou called from the front seat, distracting everyone from their conversation.

Looking where he pointed, Sam squinted, trying to bring the animal into view. A hand nudged her shoulder and she turned to see Jack offering her his binoculars. “Thanks,” she told him, taking them from him and adjusting them for her eyes.

“Seen one, before?” Jack wondered.

“Just once. And only from this far away.”

“Good,” Lou said from the front. “They’re not predatory, but they are territorial. They could mess up any of our vehicles without a second thought.”

Sam spent a little longer with the binoculars, trying to see the animal better, but they soon passed it by and the rear of their vehicle blocked her view. She’d been wanting to see one close up since getting here. The animals were something like a hippo, or a rhino. Large, with tough skin, they could easily use their weight to crush a vehicle or trample humans. Everyone on the planet kept their distance from the tycha.

Jack took the binoculars back and nodded to her thanks. Glancing at his watch, he told the vehicle’s occupants, “Going to check in and then we should have lunch. Especially you, Sam,” he turned towards her. “I know you science types. You’ll be so excited when we reach Silvado that you’ll forget to stop for food and rest until you pass out, and then I’ll have to carry you to Dr Janet and listen to her berate us both for being so stupid.”

Raising her eyebrow at him, Sam tried to look unimpressed. Jack just winked and grinned as he turned away and reached for his radio. Sam found herself smiling and shaking her head as she reached for the rations in her pack. Teasing normally rankled her, but there was something about Jack that made it endearing. 


End file.
